ICS 691 News 4(2)

[Philip Johnson <johnson@hawaii.edu>]

ICS 691 News, Week 4, Issue 2

In this issue:
* List of database resources for Friday lecture
* General comments on business plans
* Preparing for Business Cycle 0
* The problems with JSP
* Appropriate classroom behavior

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List of database resources for Friday lecture

Please read these before Friday's class:

http://baobabcomputing.com/databasecentral/index.shtml
http://www.dbpd.com/vault/9802feat.htm
http://torresoft.netmegs.com/intro.html
http://www.uwf.edu/coe/tutorials/technolo/database/database.htm
http://www.aspdeveloper.net/access97
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ucs/databases/problem.html
http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,408644,00.html
http://www.informix.com/informix/
http://www.oracle.com/products/
http://www.infoworld.com

http://yellowpages.msn.com/yellowpages/results?RSC=2&RFU=/yellowpages/results%3FCKWD%3DData+systems%26CID%3D2001630%26KWDT%3D2%26NID%3D0%26STATE%3DHI%26HCITY%3D%26HSTATE%3Dx%26HZIP%3D%26SC%3D1%26LOID%3D0%26PRID%3D%252D20%26RSC%3D4%26STID%3D3%26RSP%3D1&HSTATE=HI&SC=1&CSZ=&STATE=HI&CID=2002375&UIS=0&KWD=&KWDT=

http://yellowpages.msn.com/yellowpages/results?RSC=2&CID=2001630&CITY=&STATE=HI&SC=1

---
General comments on business plans

Yesterday, I sent out individual feedback to each group on their
business plans. In this email I want to summarize some of the issues
that may apply generally to many of the companies. You'll note that
my feedback followed the '14 questions for a well built venture' from
the Wayne Brown site. However, due to time constraints, I tended to
focus on just a few areas.  I will revisit your plans during each
business cycle and expect to see improvements and refinements each
time. 

Here are some general guidelines for you to follow:

1. The Pizza Portal business model cannot be applied successfully to
every business.  I found it amusing that after reading through 50
critical evaluations of the Pizza Portal business plan, so many of
you uncritically applied it to your own business!  (The worst
offender was one group who did an initial search-and-replace of
'Pizza' with 'Asian food' but did not carefully edit the results.
Anyone for "Asian Food Hut"? :-) 

Of course, I expected this: given the severe time constraints, it
made perfect sense to begin with Pizza Portal and work from there.
However, I expect all of your business models to evolve away from
Pizza Portal's over the next few weeks as you continue to think about
the unique needs of your product and market. 

2. Price is typically a poor competitive advantage. The problem with
using "low cost" as your basic advantage is that there is nothing to
prevent another company from coming in and offering a slightly lower
price.  If that's all you have going for you, you're going to lose.
In Pizza Portal, for example, the real competitive advantage was not
the discount coupons (that was just a lure to the site), it was the
content and services.  Once Pizza Portal becomes established as
providing the best *content* related to local pizza, it becomes much
harder for another company to establish itself as having *better*
content. (That's one reason why Consumer Reports does so well and
maintains its presence.)

3. Promoting yourself as "Yahoo for students" won't work unless you
actually have content and services different from Yahoo that students
will prefer.  Some business plans contend that they will succeed
simply because they are focussed on students, but do not provide any
examples of unique content or services for students.  Students aren't
stupid: if they can get everything at Yahoo (or some other big site)
that you have, plus lots of other stuff, they'll go to Yahoo instead
of you.  

4. Don't generate all revenues from advertising.  This is high risk
in the real world, high risk in VCommerce world, and totally
unnecessary and undesirable in this class.  I believe that those who
continue down this path lack either effort or creativity  or both.
In every business plan I've seen, there are opportunities to generate
revenues directly from consumers. In some cases, for example, it's
through establishing "membership" programs with higher and more
interesting levels of service to those who join. 

5. Make sure you include all of the sections in a VCommerce business
plan.  Although some people copied the Pizza Portal right down to the
font, at least that guaranteed that they included all of the material
and sections.  Others developed their own custom document, and many
of those neglected important sections or data. Be sure to be familiar
with the VCommerce Volume 1 (in which the contents of a VCommerce
business plan are described) as well as the Pizza Portal example. 

6. Contact real-world businesses and consumers.  A few business plans
make assumptions or claims about markets or products that are
(currently) unsubstantiated by any data.  If you, for example, are
planning a company that would burn custom CDs, you need to contact
music publishing companies and talk to them about what would be
involved in licensing their music.  If you, for example, are planning
a company to lease textbooks, you need to do a survey of students to
find out if there is actually a market for this service .   I know
that some of you simply ran out of time, but you should be continuing
to work on your business plans throughout the semester, and my
standards will be higher each time they get submitted. 

---
Preparing for Business Cycle 0

I want to remind you of a few things in preparation for Business
Cycle 0.

1. The Business Cycle will start on Monday, so you will have the
weekend to work on it.  However, the more you do before Friday, the
more help you'll be able to get from Mette during the third session
of the class. 

2.  Content, content, content.  I am in general extremely pleased
with your business ideas---there's lots of interesting and plausible
ideas.  How well your site does in VCommerce (as in the real world)
is going to be based to some extent upon graphics and sizzle and to a
much greater extent on *content*.  In this case, DON'T use Pizza
Portal as a model for an appropriate amount of content for VCommerce.
Pizza Portal is deliberately simplified and almost devoid of
content---we did that so that it would be useful as a bootstrapping
mechanism for your own sites.   Each real VCommerce site should
contain LOTS of content---a reasonable amount might be 100-500
possible HTML pages (note that you might only have a dozen ASP files
along with a database with 100 records to generate this level of
content). 

You generate content by "simulating" a business that's already been
in operation online for a while.  If you're an online auction
service, create 100 sell offers and requests-to-buy of books for
various classes. While the sellers and potential buyers are faked,
the book listings and classes aren't.  If your service offers an
AsianFoodCam, borrow the digital camera, go take a bunch of pictures
of various asian food restaurants at various times, and simulate the
camera by switching the view every few seconds.

The content part can really be the fun part of VCommerce if you get
into it.  Let your imagination and creativity fly. Let people
actually print out membership cards, or coupons, or whatever.  (They
might become valuable collectors items on EBay some day :-)

3.  The Daily VCommerce Bulletin.  Each morning of a business cycle,
an email "VCommerce Bulletin" will be sent to both ICS 691 students
and all of the users participating in the simulation. This bulletin
will provide some market data, such as the number of users who have
visited so far, the amount of money that's been spent, and the amount
of money remaining to be spent. In addition, each VCommerce company
will be allocated a tiny bit of space (2-3 lines) to advertise
themselves and any "specials" or promotions. The goal of the
VCommerce bulletin is to keep reminding users that the simulation
exists, and to provide you with a chance to tell users about changes
to your website in hopes of encouraging return visits. Note that if
your website is sufficiently interesting, emotionally evocative, and
above all updated with new content every day, then some users may
return to your website during the week to see what's new even after
they've spent all their money and made their investment choices and
thus "finished" with the simulation. Now that I think about it, Mette
and I might extend the advertising revenue model to add supplemental
income to those sites that successfully attract users back even after
they've finished purchasing and investing. 

4.  Your business plan will need to be complete by Monday, because it
will be made available for investors to look at.  

---
The problems with JSP

JSP (Java Server Pages) is a competitor to ASP (Active Server Pages).
Many cognoscenti believe that JSP is superior to ASP.  This article
takes the position that JSP still has merit as an alternative to ASP,
but that Template Engines are really the future for web page
development.  Check it out:

http://www.servlets.com/soapbox/problems-jsp.html

---
Appropriate classroom behavior

I noticed a disturbing situation last Friday: a group of 691 students
were in the hallway outside of class talking during a presentation. I
want to ask your cooperation in staying focussed, present, and
attentive during ICS 691 for the following reasons:

(a) We can hear you talking outside, and it is disruptive and
demoralizing to the speakers. 

(b) You are likely to miss important material that is being presented.

(c) If I notice this occuring in future, you will be marked as
absent.  

For my part, I will try to help out by giving folks in the hallway a
1 minute warning before class resumes so they have a chance to finish
talking and come inside.